Thursday, August 16, 2012

STUG LIFE PT 2. And then they got painted

Yes, that hot.

Howdy there boys and girls. I gotta tell ya. There's something about August that makes me lazy as hell. The number of posts is woefully low for the first half of the month and, well, I think it's because of the ball melting heat, i just kind of . Yeah I said it. But it also means I've spent some serious time indoors.

Over the weekend you saw my first attempt at a StuG Batterie from Grey Wolf and I freaking loved it. I know it's not a perfect list, but it's fun and has StuG's, lots of them, so how could I go wrong?

The clear answer is I couldn't. Thanks to a sage buy by yours truly at historicon I came into 12 StuG's for right around $75 bucks. A great deal! That meant all I needed to get was the riders and I'd be off to the races. So I headed down to my FLGS and ordered me up some Beigliet Assault Company platoons, they came in yesterday and like that, I was ready to go.

I started on the StuG's on Sunday, and have focused solely on them over the last five days. Here, you'll see my first attempt at airbrushing and pea dotting with, I kid you not, a single bristle from a broom. Honestly, I think they turned out quite well. I'm very interested to know what you all think and remember, keep living the StuG LIFE.

StuG Batterie Assemble!

I set my goal as 3 platoons of 3 and the HQ in this paint-stravaganza with the later war Pea Dot pattern. My first attempt at doing this was on the Konigstigers I posted a few posts back.

Instead of hand painting the pattern, this time I went with the airbrush. CrazyLoon, one of my partners in crime here, showed my how to use this devilish contraption. I makes some of life easier, but you have to be gentle with it a very diligent about cleaning the thing up.

I went for two platoons with riders and 1 without, the HQ also does not have riders.

On the StuG's themselves the colors I used were reflective green (VJ 890) and Citadel Doombull Brown over a base of Middlestone (VJ 882)

I actually started out by also airbrushing on Agrax Earthshade wash from Citadel, but this was folly. Everything became far too dark and I had to go over all the colors again with the airbrush.

Although it turned out to be a bit of serendipity as I think it added some real texture and additional highs and lows to the camo scheme that I would not have gotten otherwise.

For the Pea Dotting I used a bristle from my broom (yes, I cleaned it first). Over the Reflective Green and Doombull Brown I used Middlestone and over the Middlestone I used Reflective Green.

It actually turned out pretty well, and gave some very uniform dots.

After dotting I went for the wash, this time I do what I usually do, which is line "darklight" er... shade all the recesses with an appropriate subtone. Luckily greens and browns both react very well to Agrax so that what I used here.

Why did I pick that unit badge? Because it looked cool. That's why.

For the metals, I finally got my hands on Gunmetal Grey (VJ 863) and used that with a wash of Secret Weapon Miniatures Soft Body Black, which I swear by for shading any lighter color that needs to go dark but not to true black.

I did all the Waffenfarbe for the StuG crews as Artillery Red (Old Citadel Blood Red) and did the same thing on the riders, even though I'm not sure that that is strictly accurate.

Here's the command StuG. You'll notice it's got red numbering while some of the Other Stug's have Black Outlines. Not only was the black outline numbering folly, as it bleeds right into the darker colors making it unreadable, something happened with BF's normally quality transfer paper that made most of it disintegrate upon being pulled off the backing. I'll be ordering up more red numbering and doing the whole company that way.

The flesh was done with a 1:1 mix of Panzer Aces Flesh Base (VJ 341) and Pazner Aces Flesh Highlight (VJ 342) followed by a wash of old Citadel Orgyn Flesh, once that dried I did a highlight of straight PA Flesh Highlight.

Uniforms were done in the standard German Fieldgrey (VJ 830), washed with Agrax Earthshade and then highlight picked back up in the Fieldgrey.

Many of the Schurtzen are in pieces as whenever a round would hit the plate it was likely to fall off. Also, I think the lack of uniformity among the Schurtzen makes the tanks look more battleworn especially because I chose not to do heavy weathering or dirtying up on these like I do with my winter vehicles. I just think with the pea dots and the riders it would make the model look to busy.

The camo on some of the riders was done using the directions for Panzergrenadiers in Grey Wolf, I did however, wash the parka's in Gryphonne Sepia (old Citadel) afterwards to give it some depth.

Look Ma, More StuG (I'm running out things to say :)

Hope you enjoyed the walk through and pics! Let me know what ya'll think. And cheers!

Thanks! The primary difference between the Stug III and IV was the addition of the drivers box on the front right, which would show up on the model as like, two little vision slits on the front right of the model. I think its safe to use the StuG boxes as either StuH 42's, Stug III or IV. All the IV's used the rounded mantlet you see on my models. In other words, I think you're good to go!